Sweet Link ParTEA (October 2018)

Don’t worry, y’all, we’ve still got nearly a week left of October! I’ve been here, there, and everywhere this month, so it’s been such a treat to sit down and read through our saved links for this month. Does it help that I’m working on this post over a solo dinner at my favorite State College bar (Chumley’s – this is fact) over a cheese sammie and some veg soup? Yes. Yes it does. I had the most delicious hot toddy, so it really had that ParTEA element! Treat yo’selves to a quiet evening of a hot beverage + lots of reading. You’ve worked hard, and we see you.

Trans rights are human rights. We’ve got not one, but twoarticles and a Twitter thread about how the idea of 2 genders is biologically and socially over simplistic. We can do better, and being informed is one of many steps we need to be taking.

This next story elicited an “OMG that’s so cool” from my lips within seconds. I bet your nearest state park doesn’t have UNDERWATER TRAILS. Note: Pictured is Rachel, myself, and our college roommates during our trip near the site of this trail; I would NOT have been up for exploring the under water route.

This piece about what indigenous peoples can teach scientists about the natural world is equal parts ‘well, duh’ and ‘I have so many new questions’. Important to remember ecological knowledge and oral histories go back thousands of years.

I’m having a nerdy interest overload with this article that combines data analysis + eating well + limiting food waste + food/data puns. Those are all my favorites! Letisha Smith – winner of the 2018 Award for Statistical Excellence in Early‐Career Writing – started the year with the resolve to eat smarter, with less food and less money going to waste. They turned to machine learning to help streamline their meal plans.

A little feel-good story about the presence (or lack of presence!) of man-made Nitrogen in open ocean coral. While other models and sampled locations predict/show an increase in Nitrogen levels in sampled coral, this PhD research that sampled a 130-year-old brain coral did not provide evidence of increased nitrogen pollution in the area (near Bermuda).

A letter for graduate students nearing having to defend their dissertation proposals with 10 helpful points. May we all have an advisor that is as communicative and supportive. These are also super useful items for prepping for your defense!

The concept of an “invasive” species and how we manage ecosystems is quite complex! This is a very well-done and insightful article from FiveThirtyEight that explores how varied the narrative around this topic can be and the challenges we face when deciding how to allocate our limited resources.

For the record I am pro-eating insects. I used to think I’d only opt for ingredients like cricket flour that are a bit more disembodied, but after this article I would for sure chow down on some bee larvae tacos.

“As a community, we need to do better. We need to be transparent about work-life challenges in doctoral study — and not just talk about it but provide concrete support and actual suggestions.”

A reminder that scientists can interpret the same data (or in this case 3.7 billion year old rock formation samples) in very different ways. This coverage of the “latest eruption of contentiousness in the field of paleobiology” of #teamOldFossil vs #TeamJustARock is an enjoyable read.

Apparently Louisville, Ky (home, sweet ol’ KY home) will be the location of a first-of-its-kind collaboration between environmentalists, city leaders and public health professionals. The Green Heart Project, funded in part by the United States National Institutes of Health, will plant trees in neighborhoods throughout the city and monitor how they affect residents’ health. This Nature report looks at projects form The Nature Conservancy and asks what it would take to use conservation to aid in solving human problems on a global scale.

We’re killing off mammals faster than they can evolve. “If current conservation efforts are not improved, so many mammal species will become extinct during the next five decades that nature will need 3 to 5 million years to recover.” So let’s improve those conservation efforts, y’all!

This next article is a JOURNEY. Apparently a primeval water receding from Pangea, known as the Carnian Pluvial Episode may have paved the way for the explosion and success of Dinosaurs. “It was one of the oddest climate events, and most severe biotic crises, in the history of life.”